The Keep (25 page)

What a scream. It ripped through the space, stabbing Danny’s eardrums. Ann flinched so hard she woke up the baby, who started wailing, too. But the bigger kid drowned the baby out. He was shrieking from his perch on Howard’s shoulders, his head pushed up against the bars. Maybe being that high up was what let him see it first.

And now the whole group saw what he was seeing: skeletons, lots of them—on the floor, piled against the walls, some with bits of stuff around them that might have been clothing. They lay in the positions they’d died in, arms stretched out, yellow skulls angled up toward the bars as if they were still hoping someone would show up and let them out. Their eye sockets were huge, like flies’ eyes, and their grimacing jaws were jammed with teeth. Danny knew what a skeleton looked like, but that was no preparation. His mind went numb, not believing it. It had to be fake. He wanted it to be fake. The whispering in his ears reached a kind of crescendo—he could hear it even through the screams of the two kids.

Ann pushed her way along the bars to Howard. In a flat voice she said: I’ve got to get Benjy out.

Howard seemed too stunned to speak. He’d taken Benjy off his shoulders, and the kid lunged for his mother’s legs and clung to them, sobbing. Panic flickered through the group like electricity, but something kept it in check—peer pressure, maybe.

Howard looked down into the pit and swallowed. Yeah. Go. You know where? Tell Mick to go with you.

Ann: No, no. We’re fine, Mick can stay. She didn’t want to be alone with him.

Danny: I’ll go. He was frantic to get out.

Howard: You know where?

Mick had come over quietly. Danny turned to him. It’s just a straight shot back down that hall, right?

Mick: Yeah. He was looking at Danny hard, trying to get something across.

Danny: I should take a flashlight. Ann, too.

A couple of graduate students handed theirs over. Mick held the map under his arm, looking at Danny in that searching way.

Danny (softly): They’ll be fine, Mick. I promise.

Mick nodded. Ann took Benjy’s hand, and she and Danny started threading their way back through the torture machines. The kid’s head hung as he walked. He was moaning, a low whine that didn’t show any signs of letting up. The baby was still awake, looking around with big eyes like she was waiting to see a thing she recognized.

They passed out of the torture room and back into the hall. There was relief in just getting out of there, although the hall seemed a lot darker with only their two beams lighting it. They were inside the earth, with no light from any direction. Danny wondered why there was even air in these tunnels—were there vents of some kind? Or did you have to go deeper before the oxygen ran out?

Danny: We’ll be out of here fast.

Ann: We should never have come in.

Danny: Nope.

Ann: I had a brain lapse.

Danny: You went with Howard. We all did.

Ann: My judgment is shot.

The kid kept moaning, but he moved his legs. After a while they passed a curved doorway on the left, and Danny’s beam picked out the rows of wine bottles. They were right on track.

His heart galloped when they hit the bottom of the steps. God, he was desperate to be aboveground. He felt a second of delayed amazement at the fact that Howard had let him get away so easily.

They’d barely started climbing when the kid’s legs went liquid. He flopped down on the stone and lay still.

Ann: Benjy, you have to walk. Please, honey, I can’t carry you with Sarah on my chest.

The kid just lay there. Danny had an impulse of pure rage—if there had been a cliff, he would’ve kicked Benjy over it. Instead, he leaned down and tried to lift the kid off the ground. He’d never held a kid in his life, not even a baby. He told Ann: I’ve got him. But he didn’t have him—the kid’s head and legs and arms dangled heavily. Danny couldn’t get a secure grip and thought he might drop him. Fuck! But when he finally got his arms under the skinny butt and the boy’s head on his shoulder, things improved. Benjy fastened himself onto Danny, arms tight around his neck, knees clamped at his waist.

They started up the stairs again, Danny first with the kid suctioned to his chest, then Ann with the baby. Now that the kid had stopped moaning, Danny noticed the whispering again. It came back like water filling up a hole—
hershashasha…wassafrassa—
almost words, but not quite. They took one turn up the stairs, then another.

Danny: We’re getting close, I think.

Ann: Let’s hope.

A second or two later, something smashed Danny’s head from above. The kid flailed in his arms and Danny dropped his flashlight. It tumbled down the stairs and Ann shouted, scared.

What happened? Is Benjy okay?

Danny stood there, bewildered. He tasted blood—he’d bitten his tongue. He thought someone had hit him over the head with something heavy, but when he reached up, he found a hard surface cutting off the stairs.

Danny: He’s fine. There’s—can you point your light?

Ann aimed her flashlight up. The horizontal door that the stairs twisted through had been shut. Danny shoved at it with both arms but it didn’t budge. It was locked.

The baroness.

He swallowed. For a minute he didn’t feel anything, and then a tidal wave of panic came up in him, a panic like he’d never felt before, even running alone in those woods. This had nothing to do with his mind or the worm—it was deeper. Skeletons stretched out in a cage. Danny had a physical need to scream, flail, something, but the kid in his arms kept him still. And for some reason, not moving seemed to hold the panic back.

Danny looked at Ann. There was absolute alto between them.

Ann: We have to go back.

She gave him his flashlight, which he hung on the fingers of one hand. Ann headed down the stairs, but Danny hesitated. Finally she stopped too.

Danny (whispering): Wait.

They were quiet, and in the quiet Danny heard something shift. A sound on the other side of that door.

He said: Liesl?

Until that second, he’d had no idea he knew the baroness’s name. She must have told him that night.

A rustle above the door. She was there, listening. Danny’s whole body broke out in goose bumps.

Liesl. Please let us out. It sounded wobbly, desperate.

There was a stirring, a scrape of pointed heels on the iron door. I’ll do nothing of the kind. The iron muffled her voice, took away its shrillness.

Danny: We’ve got little kids down here. All kinds of other people. Just open the door.

The baroness laughed. It was a terrible sound, wet and raucous. You think I care what happens to you? To any of you?

Come on, Liesl. Open the door.

You don’t believe me. You can’t believe I won’t do what you want me to do. You’re children, you Americans, every one of you. And the world is very, very old.

Danny: You’re right, I don’t believe it. I think you’re a better person than that. Christ, what was he talking about?
A better person?
Danny wasn’t sure she was a person at all.

The baroness howled with laughter. She was having the time of her life. The sound of her laugh made Danny sweat.

Danny: Just tell us what you want. Anything. It’s yours: money? Howard’s rolling in it.

I have exactly what I want. I set a trap and you’ve fallen in it like the idiots you are. There’s no way out of those tunnels except through this keep. You’ll die, all of you, the children too. And as your screams grow weak and faint, I and the eighty generations who made me, the twenty-eight Liesl von Ausblinkers who lived and died before I was born, will rejoice. We’ll laugh! The Tartars couldn’t take this keep and neither can the Americans, with all their power and all their money.

She was bonkers. Sick—how had Danny not seen it?

He’d already turned and was heading back down the stairs. The kid was jerking in his arms, and Danny couldn’t let him hear any more. As he rounded a curve, he heard the baroness laugh.

Going so soon? Too bad! We had such fun the last time, Danny…you especially, I think!

Danny’s legs shook so spastically that he worried he’d collapse trying to get down the rest of the stairs. He was cold and soaked with sweat. When they got back to the hall, Ann stopped. She pushed the hair out of her face and held the baby’s head in her hands. Danny saw the terror in her. She kissed the soft hair on her baby’s scalp.

Benjy was moaning. The baroness’s words were caught in his ears, Danny could tell. He needed to erase them, keep them from tunneling into the boy’s brain. He started whispering into his hair as they followed the endless hall: It’ll be fine, you’ll see, you’ll grow up and you won’t even remember this stuff, it’ll all be so long ago, just a funny thing you’ll tell your friends and they’ll say: What? No way! And you’ll say: Yeah, it’s true, I promise, that stuff really happened but I was a brave kid and I got through it, I kept my cool because that’s the kind of kid I am….

Where was this shit coming from? Danny had no idea. He whispered to the kid and meanwhile the whispering voices kept piping their weird language into Danny’s ears until he wondered if he was translating, if the voices were actually telling him what to say. And it worked. Or at least Benjy stopped moaning. They passed the wine cellar, and a while later Danny saw a patch of light and heard Howard’s voice and the graduate students’, a back-and-forth of breathless sound that shook Danny. They were happy. They had no idea what was coming. The panic rose back up in him like bile.

He followed Ann into the torture room. Howard was standing on one of the machines. When he saw Ann and Danny he dropped to the ground. What? What happened?

Ann was moving toward him. Danny followed behind her.

Ann: We can’t get out that way. The stairs are blocked off.

She didn’t scream or cry, none of the things Danny would’ve expected. She said it gently.

Howard:
Blocked off?

Ann: That door? In the stairs? It’s shut now. So we’ll have to find another way out.

She took Howard’s hand. It was incredible—like she’d forgiven him for getting them into this thing, when they weren’t even out yet. Might never
get
out. Danny was still holding the kid. Benjy’s weight had gone very solid in the last few minutes, and Danny thought he might be asleep.

Howard: I—I don’t understand. Say that again.

Ann: The door. We can’t go that way. We have to go another way.

Who says there
is
another way?

Danny watched the panic he’d felt in himself roar over Howard and swallow him whole. The guy didn’t have a chance.

Howard: The door—no! It has to—

It’ll be fine, honey. We just have to find another way.

No! There’s—no! Oh my God!

Relax, sweetheart. Ann put her hand on Howard’s head, but he twisted away.

No. No! We have to—oh my God, please!

His voice raked the walls. Everyone stared at him. Howard shut his eyes and jackknifed over so his head was near the floor. Ann leaned over him, trying to straighten him up without letting the baby slide out of the pouch on her chest. She must have seen this coming, known how he’d react. But she couldn’t pull Howard back up. He’d started to scream, and every scream tore through Danny and seemed to take some of his blood away with it. He felt on the verge of passing out. That current of panic moved through the group again: there were cries and flashlights swung around, making the room wild with light. A bunch of people ran back into the hall and headed for the stairs. Danny thought of the baroness waiting there.

Howard had left his body completely—he was somewhere else. No, no, please! Please! Oh my God, I can’t breathe. Help!

The room was starting to spin. Danny felt like all the oxygen had run out. The harder he tried to breathe the dizzier he got. The kid stirred in his arms and he thought, I can’t pass out while I’m holding this kid.

Ann: Howard, stop. You’ve got to stop. Stop! We’ve got the kids here and a lot of other people who need to get out.

But Howard couldn’t stop. His body went suddenly rigid, his eyes wide and blind. He clawed at the air and then, in a terrible guttural voice, he screamed Danny’s name, dragging it out so it filled the torture space with one long howl.

Howard: Danny! Danny! Danny help me, please let me out.

Danny please, I’ll do anything—please let me out. I’ll give you anything you want. Wait, Danny, don’t go! Don’t leave me here!

He wasn’t looking at Danny, but everyone else was. Mick and Ann and the graduate students who were still in the room gaped at him in confusion. Each time Howard screamed his name seemed to push Danny’s skull one step closer to exploding. Unbelievably, the kid in his arms was still asleep. Danny noticed himself squeezing Benjy, clutching onto him like the kid was holding
him
up.

Howard: Danny! Don’t do this to me, please. Please come back! Ple—ee—ee—Big gasping sobs broke up his screams. Howard was crying like a little kid cries, his face slick with snot and tears. It was something no one should see.

The graduate students who had run to the stairs stampeded back in, frantic.
It’s locked, the door’s locked, we’re trapped down here, we’re going to die.
Now the room seized up with real hysteria for the first time. At the beginning it was aimless, swerving terror, but when Howard shouted Danny’s name again the group pulled in around it in desperation. A panicked mass of people closed in on Danny, crazed and wailing:
Danny, help!

If I pass out I’ll drop the kid.

Danny, Danny, please let us out please help us please….

Danny: Okay. Okay!

But no one heard him. He couldn’t hear himself. Their cries ricocheted off the stone walls: Danny please. Please help us please help us please….

Danny: Okay. Shut
up.

He said it loudly, and the people closest to him piped down. Pretty soon the other ones did, too. Everyone stood there, waiting for Danny to do something. What should he do? He had no idea what to do. Howard had crumpled to the ground and was hunched there, sobbing. Ann knelt next to him, her arms around his neck, the sleeping baby still hanging from her chest.